Category Archives: shopping

And let the record show that I did not go back the next morning and buy the cheetah

Shift

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After two weeks in the country, my American twang has settled down and I sound pretty much Irish again. (All my American friends are wondering what I’m talking about. As far as they’re concerned I don’t have any American accent.) It just takes a little time for the shift to occur, as my ear gets reaccustomed to the intonations and the vowels and the nice crisp consonants.

I’ve been obsessed with black boots while we’ve been here. I’ve watched people go by from the ankles down, mostly. I’ve been to the Clarks shop at least three times. I’ve ascertained that shoes here are habitually a measurement wider than the regular size in America, which means that everything in the shop should fit me. I have to take advantage of this, because in the States I always have to order shoes off the Internet.

I cruised around the clothes shops a few times, but before I could commit to anything, I had to wait for my eye to shift fashion-wise too. And then I had to be realistic about what I would buy and wear if I lived here versus what I’ll actually wear once I return to my jeans-and-tops real life in America. I bought a pair of black trousers that are slim-fitting enough and of soft enough material that they will function as leggings, but with more heft to them. They’ll go inside my boots, and under long tops.

Then, eventually, I bought a pair of black ankle boots, after trying on every pair in the shop. I was delighted with them for a few hours, until they started to hurt my feet. So I brought them back and today, with my Irish money apparently burning a hole in my wallet, bought a different pair. These ones are less biker and more arctic, but they’re definitely comfortable and will suit my needs better, as well as going with my skinny jeans and the black not-leggings in a very casual, not-dressy way. Which, to be honest, is the way I need them to be, for my casual, not-dressy life of grocery shopping and school pickups and the odd committee meeting.

Tomorrow we shift once more, back to Americans. And so it goes.

View of the Pidgeon House from Blackrock

And now for something more frivolous

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You might not have been privy to my confusion over jeans last winter, but the agony of that indecision is still seared firmly in my mind.

First I bought some red jeans , but then I decided I needed too many things to make them right and that maybe the problem was with the jeans rather than the things, and I brought them back . (Also, someone directed me to this , or something very like it, and I began to think maybe they were somewhat over the red jeans thing on the other side of the Atlantic.)

Then I decided to stick to my straight/skinny blue jeans, and became quite fond of them. But I wanted to wear them with my beloved brown suede ankle boots, and I just couldn’t figure out how that was supposed to go – did I tuck the jeans into the boots or leave them over the top. Neither looked quite right. I compromised by tucking one side in, which felt a little silly and I was never very happy with.

This year, faced with the same jeans, the same boots, and the same dilemma, the solution is obvious. I should roll the bottoms of the jeans till they’re just above the tops of the boots. Why was cuffing not an option last year? Have things moved on that much? Am I right on the cutting edge of fashion? Yes, that must be it. Pinterest confirms it, actually.

Now, if you can point me in the direction of a pair of dusty plum curvy straight-legged cords that fit me perfectly and make my legs look long and slim and do not cost a week’s salary, I’d be most grateful, because that’s what I’m obsessing over this winter. (Hmm. Like these .)

Moments in independence

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On Thursday, Dash rode his bike the half-mile to school. When Mabel and I showed up in the car at 3:20 to pick him up, I’d forgotten that, but it was no biggie – we can put his bike in the back. Except he didn’t like that idea, and Mabel had already enraged him by telling him about the lollipop she got from the lady in the bank.

( Me: You don’t have to tell Dash about that lollipop.
Mabel: Yes I do. )

So I told him that he could ride his bike home and we’d take the car and meet him there. At first he was wary. He thought it was illegal.

“I can’t do that. You’re not allowed let me.”
“Yes, you can. I am.”
“But the rule. I’m not eight.”
“The rule says you can’t stay at home alone until you’re eight. It doesn’t say you can’t go home on your own. I say you can. I trust you to be a responsible cyclist.”

He was pretty stoked. Off he went. There are only two places where he has to cross the road, one of which has a crossing with signs and stripes on the road, and I think I was the only car he encountered on the way.

The same thing happened the next day. I’d let him come home on his own every day, but I like seeing the other moms at pickup time.

——————–

On Friday, Mabel and I went to the mall. Oh wait, first I have to tell you how that works.

Step 1: Order a couple of next-summer things for the kids on clearance from Land’s End. Include a pair of trousers that probably won’t fit for yourself, just because you can.

Step 2: When trousers arrive, ascertain that they are indeed mom jeans, look horrible on you, and you don’t like the colour anyway. No biggie, because you can easily return them to Sears and thus not pay any postage.

Step 3: Go to Sears at the mall. Return the jeans.

Step 4: Pass unavoidably through the kids’ section of Land’s End in Sears. Find two pairs of summer leggings on sale and an adorable dress at 25% off that you and Mabel both just love.

Step 5: End up spending more than you got back.

This right here is why the economy is doing just fine. Anyway. After that whole debacle/triumph, we had some lunch at the food court. Mabel got pizza and then we moved over to the next food outlet so I could have a tasty hummus/chicken/chickpea wrap thingy. This left me with two trays and only two hands. So I put both drinks on my tray and asked Mabel to carry hers (with just a paper plate holding the pizza slice). She demurred.

“I can’t.”
“You can. It’s just like carrying a plate, only bigger.”

She gingerly reached up to the tray and put her hands on either side. She lifted it down and carried it to the nearest table, as I carried the other tray beside her. The pizza slid a little on the plate, but nothing disastrous happened.

After we’d eaten, I asked her to clear away her tray. She picked it up again and I showed her how you have to let all the paper on top slide into the trashcan while keeping hold of the tray, and then put it on top. She could just about reach the pile of trays on the top, on her tippy toes.

As we walked towards the toystore she said quietly, with a smirk, “I’m a little bit proud of myself.”

Points of things

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Sky, sea, land

Tomorrow is the first day of the last week of the summer holidays. Mabel doesn’t go back to school till after Labor Day, but Dash starts second grade on August 19th. The second-grade thing isn’t phasing me, but the fact that the summer is almost gone is a bit stunning. This year seems to be going faster than any one before. If this keeps up, by the time I’m in my eighties, I imagine days will fly by like seconds. No wonder my mother is confused.

I partly feel like I’m just getting back into the groove of our nice laid-back summer (after the disruptions of going away, two weeks of camp, and then BlogHer) but on the other hand I’m looking forward to a bit more peace and the opportunity to throw away some of all the crap that’s been piling up around here. Because apparently I can’t do that when the kids are in the house.

I went to Target on my own for an hour yesterday and realised why I like shopping: it gives me a chance to center myself and plan things, whether it’s figuring out what might help for organizing the house a little more (I bought an in-tray!) or deciding what I want to, um, invest in this autumn. (Found a dress I want as a shirt, decided to e-Bay a bag I never use and buy one I fell in love with in Marshall’s; also tried on boots, but that’s not relevant ahem as I was saying…)

I thought I’d missed my Dad’s birthday and blamed it on the fact that apparently now I only know it’s someone’s birthday when Facebook tells me about it, and my Dad (needless to say) is not on Facebook. But then I realised I just had no idea what the heck date it was in August, and I hadn’t missed it at all. So that’s good.

I might have a freelance editing job lined up for when the kids go back to school. You might not get so much blathering from over here if I find I’m actually working instead.

In the last week both kids have started swimming underwater, Mabel for the first time ever and Dash for the first time since a little last summer. My kids have never been those ones who don’t seem to notice whether they’re on top of the water or the water’s on top of them – they would always crane their necks to keep their faces out of the water, even with goggles on for extra protection. So to see them whooshing around underneath all of a sudden is pretty cool. I told Mabel I didn’t do that till I was twelve, and she was well chuffed.

Technically, I finished the 30-day shred yesterday. That is, it was the tenth day I’ve done the level-3 workout. However, I did take off about ten days in July when I was sick and then away, and almost another two weeks from BlogHer until yesterday, and I spent a few intervening days working back up to it by doing levels one and two a couple of times. I don’t feel any different, though it’s not as hard as it was at the start, so I must be at least a tiny bit fitter and stronger. Dash says I look taller, which has to be a good sign. The scales still say I’m a few pounds lighter even though at no point did I stop eating all the muffins I usually eat. I will try to keep going until I get totally bored or something else happens or they go back to school and I try running again.

Since we didn’t do anything today, here are some photos from last weekend, when we took in some history by going to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. A decisive battle of the War of 1812 took place in Baltimore Harbor, and as the poet Francis Scott Key watched to see which flag would be flying over the fort as dawn broke the following morning, he wrote what would become the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner.

Teeny little flag up high; huge enormous flag down low

Walking the battlements

What I Wore: BlogHer ’13

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Seriously, it is utterly unimportant what you wear to a BlogHer conference (unless it is). I get it now. There is no dress code. Whatever you wear, there will be people who are more stylishly dressed, more formally dressed, more dressily dressed, more quirky, more queer, more basic, more elaborate, or more schlumpy than you. But people tried to tell me this and I studiously ignored them, because planning my wardrobe for the conference was the one area I could have control over in this whole crazy unknown future.

So I feel a bit embarrassed to even share this post, but I’m doing it anyway, precisely because I’m not a fashion blogger or a style blogger or an arty crafty person or anyone with an agenda about what she wears. When I was searching for guidance on this area before I went, I wanted to know what the regular conference-goers wore, not what the style bloggers were showcasing. I’m not saying I’m particularly representative of anything, but I’d say I didn’t stand out as over or underdressed, if that’s what you are going for. And I was comfortable and happy about how I looked, which was the aim of the game.

My one caveat is that it really is COLD in conference centers, and my thin summer cardigans weren’t quite up to the job, for me. Next time, whenever, if-ever, I’ll bring something a little more substantial. A full-body fleece wouldn’t go amiss. Maybe a Snuggie.

************

So this was day one. Apologies for the badly lit bathroom selfie. I think my top looks like a sofa, but I hope in a good way. I usually shy away from prints, but this one is so delicate and pretty that I was happy in it. It’s a sleeveless top in a very light chiffony fabric, which would have been perfect in the July weather I was envisaging. In the event, we had an oddly cool few days and I don’t think I removed the cardigan at all. I forgot to wear earrings and thus had a short identity crisis during breakfast, but I got over it.

Top: Marshalls. Khakis: Old Navy. Cardigan: Gap, I think. Sandals: Naot.

On Friday night I got dressed up, but you don’t need to even do that, depending on what parties you might be attending. Again, some did, some didn’t. I didn’t feel overdressed but I was chilly waiting for Voices of the Year to get started. (That’s a polite understatement. Also, they kept turning up the music because Queen Latifah was stuck in traffic, so I couldn’t even chat to my friends without screaming.) The dress looks odd because you can’t see the length, but it’s just to my knee. Both knees, actually. If you were around for the belt discussion, I asked my roomie for her opinion and went without the belt at the last minute. In hindsight, still not sure about that.

Dress: Nine West from Macy’s. Cardigan: Gap, as before. Jewelry: Old Navy. Sandals (not visible, obvs, but I am wearing some): dull gold slingbacks from Softspots with a fairly low heel.

On Saturday morning I was a little hung-over and feeling I’d lived several lifetimes since I’d arrived in Chicago. I already understood about it not mattering what I wore, but I’d packed the clothes so I had to put them on. (See, I didn’t even bother with a selfie, so this is that picture of me and Stacey again.)

Saturday: Green cowl t-shirt, Marshall’s. Cropped stretch denim trousers, New York & Co. Cardigan: Old Navy. Shoes: Naots again, which are incredibly comfortable and well worth the investment.

These trousers (which you can’t see very well) were inexpensive, fit nicely, and are very comfortable thanks to the stretch. I wore this all day, from conference to airport to home at midnight, so I guess it was a good choice. The green and orchid were more vibrant together in real life than they look here, so it wasn’t a day for feeling like blending into the background. It’s good to wear something a little bright or otherwise distinctive, so that if you’re trying to meet up with a stranger you don’t have to tell them you’re the one on the jeans and the black top.

Now I look at it, I really did have the green and purple theme going throughout, which is only because apparently everything I own is either green or purple . When I got to the airport and realised my suitcase was purple and my carry-on backpack was green, it was not really a proud moment. More of a sigh, really.

See what I mean?

I think I’m going with the pale lilac toenails

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So far so good with summer camp , though Mabel objects to having to stay quiet for rest time after lunch, and I didn’t send any money with Dash on his field trip so he was subjected to the huge injustice of not being able to buy anything in the gift shop at the Baltimore aquarium yesterday. As for me, I’m having a lovely time.

Yesterday I went to the mall and spent more than an hour shopping, unhurriedly and in a focused manner, alone. I don’t think I’ve done that since I had children, and it was excellent. First I bought a bra from the proper place to buy bras, so that everything else I tried on would look better. Then I found exactly the trousers I was looking for in the first place I looked for them, and on sale too. (Making up for the bra. When you breastfeed for seven years, your double-Ds turn into something more like double-Fs, and there are no cheap bras.)

I bought some posh moisturizer and had some good lunch and tried on some dresses that were almost but not quite what I wanted. I resisted the Nordstrom lady’s hard sell on the blue dress (which was really cute but would clash with my shoes and need alterations and was a little dressier than I wanted) and at the last minute found the perfect thing in Macy’s, on clearance, no alterations needed, just dressy enough, and works with the shoes I already have. Score.

Yes, a lot of this shopping is inspired by the upcoming blogging conference . No, you don’t have to go and buy new things or take up an exercise regime to go to a conference. But I like motivators, and inspiration, and finding excuses to do things I might not otherwise do.

Let me put it like this:

How would I like people to look at a blogging conference?

a) Fat
b) Thin
c) Friendly

How do I think people should dress at a blogging conference?

a) Preppy
b) Sloppy
c) In something comfortable that makes you feel like your (best) self

Option c) all the way. That’s all.

Personally, however, I do have a few other requirements: not being too hot or too cold, not feeling like I have to stand up straight and suck my gut in all the time, not worrying about sweat stains if I’ve been shuttling between conference venues in Chicago summer heat, and not clashing with my orange bag. And, vitally, wearing shoes I can walk in. All of the above will help me feel like myself and meet new people with a genuine smile.

I’m not going to pretend that BlogHer isn’t a big deal for me. It is. I’ve never left my children overnight before, I’ve been out of the professional workplace for seven years, and I’m only just starting to call myself a blogger out loud. Sometimes. So while dressing for a fairly casual conference and hopping on a plane without emergency diapers and goldfish crackers might be a regular occurence for many attendees there, for me it’s a giant leap out of my everyday life and back (or forwards) into another.

As far as I know, there’s only going to be one other person there who I’ve actually met (though she knows several others). Quite a few of the bloggers I love to read regularly, and who I know have gone in the past, don’t seem to be going this year. I’m fairly interested in some of the sessions and of course I want to see the keynote speakers and the Voices of the Year presentations, but mostly I’m going for the Experience. I want to meet people who are dorks like me.

Are you going to be there? Leave me a comment, and maybe we could try to meet up.

Consumer index

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I panicked at Target this morning.

So many of Target’s success stories probably start out that way. And by success stories I mean times they parted people from way more of their money than they went in intending to be parted from.

So I went in to get a pack of crayons for Dash (yes, we have eleventy million crayons in the house, but he needed a new pack for school, and taking some brand-new practically unused crayons out of our big box and putting them into a smaller box would not do, in spite of the fact that he and his sister scorn everything but markers at home but I digress) and maybe a couple of other school supplies his teacher said they were running short on (scissors; how do kids run out of scissors? What are they doing with them? Using them to cut up other pairs of scissors?) and some toothpaste because he won’t use the new “clean squeeze” tube I just got because it’s too minty, damnit, even though he likes mint, and then I thought maybe some new bathtub foam letters for Mabel to keep the grand universal scales of “you bought something for one child” level…

… and then I got to the Star Wars section of the toys and suddenly worried that Target would stop promoting Star Wars all of a sudden, because maybe something else is the next big thing and now that Disney has Star Wars (even though with JJ Abrams at the helm everyone knows that it’s going to be absolutely the thing to see, but maybe the 6-year-old set aren’t so well up on JJ Abrams’s oeuvre, not having watched all of Alias , probably) perhaps the cool kids won’t want lightsabers by April so I bought the damn Darth Maul red double-blade lightsaber that Dash has been begging for since some time last summer.

(I got into big, huge, trouble with him one night a few weeks ago when he suddenly remembered that he had thought he might get one for Christmas and then he didn’t, and I was the worst, cruelest mother on the planet (and probably also on Alderaan and Tatooine) for not giving him a double-blade for Christmas when I had promised I would (note: I hadn’t) and I should go out the very next morning and get him a double-blade to make up for it and when I wouldn’t agree that this was clearly the correct way for me to atone for my sins, he threw a long, long hissy that still gets revisited from time to time when he remembers to be very upset about the whole incident.)

So there, fine, now he’s getting his double-blade for his birthday (at the end of April; never say I don’t plan ahead), because you can’t just go out and buy people big presents when it’s not Christmas or birthday or the culmination of some long-worked-for sticker-chart extravaganza.

(In related news, Mabel is plotting how she can get another baby sooner than her November birthday. She asked me the other day if we could do another star chart for her using the toilet, since that worked so well the last time. I pointed out that she knew how to do that now, so no, that wouldn’t work. I wonder how I can leverage this desire of hers into some sort of necessary behaviour?)

But despite having the entire cave of wonders at my child-free-browsing disposal, I still didn’t manage to find anything nice or unexpected or quirky or even predictable to give my beloved husband on the occassion of tomorrow’s Annoying Hallmark Holiday. Looks like he’s getting two delightful children. Again.

Hey, this year they’re potty trained. It gets better.

Ode to shoe

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Ah, Zappos, how I love thee. And also hate thee, for you try so hard and so well to part me from my money.

Zappos, in case you live under a rock or on the tragically Zappos-less rock of Ireland, is an Internet mail-order shoe-selling company. They sell other things too now, but shoes are their main stock-in-trade. If you say Zappos, I think shoes, and so do many, many other women who have fallen into their supple, shiny, suede-trimmed trap.

It’s not that they’re bad. It’s just that they’re very very good.

So you go to the site and you look at lots of pretty pictures of shoes. You can see the shoes from every angle, you can zoom in to examine the stitching detail or the pattern on the sole, you can even watch a video where someone wears the shoe and then holds it and bends it to show how delightfully flexible it is. You can read reviews by other people who were delighted with these shoes, or disappointed by them in some specific way, and thus you can make an educated guess as to which shoes are best for you. They have all those odd sizes that are so hard to find in stores, like wides and narrows. You can sort them out by size or style or colour or brand or season – or emotion they inspire, probably.

But here’s the best bit. Shipping is free, and return shipping is free. So you can order as many pairs as take your fancy, safe in the knowledge that if they’re not quite right once you have them in your own hands, and on your own feet, you can send them back and not be a penny out of pocket.

Oh, those canny Zappos people, they are so clever. Because once you have the shoes not just in your hands and on your feet – as you might at the mall or on the high street – but in your very own house where you can try them on with all thicknesses of socks, with trousers and jeans and skirts and everything you own, the temptation to just let the nice people in the computer keep your money while you keep these shoes that are so nearly right, but maybe just not exactly what you had been initially envisaging, that temptation is great. These shoes that you might not even have picked off the display in the store, because you could see immediately that the shade was wrong, or the leather was oddly wrinkly, or you were actually looking for sandals, not boots – now you can see that really there could be a place in your collection for these shoes too. Maybe you’d be crazy to send them back.

Also, of course, sending them back requires action. You have to package them up again, and your children have already run off to pop the bubble wrap. You have to seal the box, and you can’t find the packing tape. You have to print out a return label, and the printer is all the way downstairs in the basement and sometimes the wireless connection doesn’t work so you have to go down there and manually turn it on. And then you have to drive to the post office or the UPS store and bring it inside. (I’ve heard you can just give it to your mail carrier too, but I don’t ever trust my mail carrier to actually take things as well as deliver them. That sort of thing would never work in Ireland.) Sure, you don’t have to pay anything, but all that activity, when you could just let them keep your few paltry dollars (eighty, whatever, were these on sale, I don’t remember) and have these shoes in your collection for the day when you do own the perfect pants/skirt/suspenderbeltwhatIdon’tjudge . . . well, you see how it goes.

Right now, as you might have guessed, I have two pairs of shoes upstairs, all nicely re-packed in their boxes with the fiddly plastic mouldy things and the tissue paper and the inner bags all perfectly replaced. One pair was gorgeous, the perfect colour, but not comfortable enough. The other pair was blissfully comfy but the wrong colour. I’m trying very hard to either just let it go and send them back or find some good reason why I need the brown ones so that I can keep them.

Oh, Zappos. I just can’t quit you.

Weekend edition

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I have a confession. I hate weekends.

At least, I’m really bad at them. I suppose it’s a leftover inclination from all those years when weekend meant something different, and less taxing, than Monday to Friday. But now all it means is that we have no particular schedule and are required to either have some of that holy grail – quality family time – or else feel guilty for failing.

I am also hampered by my extreme lack of ambition, outing-wise. The museums downtown are great, but we’ve seen the child-friendly ones quite a lot now, and they don’t change the dinosaurs all that often. I’d like to go to the art galleries, but the children don’t enjoy those much. A nice walk in the great outdoors would be excellent for our mental and physical health, but dragging our offspring to walk somewhere and look at scenic nature is doomed from the get-go. You can try to bribe them with hot chocolate afterwards, but they’d much rather have the drink right now and skip the nature, thank you.

Today we even considered pushing the boat out and going to see a film.

Us: Hey, guys, how about we … [thrill of anticipation]… go to see a movie this afternoon?
Them: Nooooooo.
Us, grasping at straws: There’d be popcorn.
Them: Nah.

They’d much rather sit at home watching tried and trusted episodes of Curious George on PBS than see something new and exciting and potentially scary on the big, noisy screen that you can’t get away from.

It almost makes me yearn for the old days, when they were little. Okay, so you had to pack the entire contents of your house and fridge before you could get out the door, and someone always had a huge up-the-back-of-the-onesie blowout just as you strapped them into the car, but the decision-making was up to you. If you said “Right, we’re going to have a lovely walk and see a waterfall!”, they’d be pretty much powerless against your bundling them into their coats and carseats and stroller and Ergo and just going there. Apart from the poop and the requisite tantrum, I suppose.

But nowadays, everyone’s buy-in is essential just to get people out of pyjamas, never mind wearing shoes and socks and coats and sitting voluntarily in the car.

Honestly, sometimes I almost want to have another, just so that I can get someone doing what I want instead of what they want. (Don’t worry. I know that’s just an illusion.)

So today, despite everyone being already dressed by 9am (thanks to the remaining snow, that needed to be played in before it dissipated entirely), despite our having a conversation about what we should do today quite early on, despite discussing museums and cinemas and walks in the park, we ended up getting into the car at 3pm and going to that most exotic of destinations, Target.

Not just our regular Target; a slightly more distant, newer one. We bought one thing we needed and a few things we decided we probably needed, weathered tantrums about Christmas presents never received as we perused the toy department for someone else’s birthday present (never a good move), spent $3 per child on a “small, inexpensive” treat, and finally sat down in Starbucks for our reward for getting out of the house: latte, latte, vanilla milk, smoothie, and one slice of lemon cake split four ways.

And now we have to figure out something to do tomorrow. I’d like to curl up with a good book, but that sort of weekend is both behind and, I hope, ahead of me yet.

Awfully Chipper

Optimists think they have more fun